Reproductive assurance drives transitions to self-fertilization in experimental Caenorhabditis elegans

BMC Biology

Research Article

Ivo M Chelo¹  Ioannis Theologidis²  Christine Goy³  Henrique Teotónio⁴ 

[1] Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, P-2781-901, Apartado 14, Oeiras, Portugal;Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, P-2781-901, Apartado 14, Oeiras, Portugal;Benaki Phytopathological Institute, Stefanou Delta 8, 14561, Kifissia, Greece;Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, P-2781-901, Apartado 14, Oeiras, Portugal;Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany;Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, P-2781-901, Apartado 14, Oeiras, Portugal;École Normale Supérieure, Institut de Biologie de l’ENS (IBENS), Inserm U1024, CNRS UMR 8197, F-75005, Paris, France;

关键词: Evolutionary transition;    Selfing;    Androdioecy;    Fitness;    Experimental evolution;    Caenorhabditis elegans;    fog-2;    xol-1;    NaCl;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12915-014-0093-1

 received in 2014-07-17, accepted in 2014-10-23,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundEvolutionary transitions from outcrossing between individuals to selfing are partly responsible for the great diversity of animal and plant reproduction systems. The hypothesis of `reproductive assurance’ suggests that transitions to selfing occur because selfers that are able to reproduce on their own ensure the persistence of populations in environments where mates or pollination agents are unavailable. Here we test this hypothesis by performing experimental evolution in Caenorhabditis elegans.ResultsWe show that self-compatible hermaphrodites provide reproductive assurance to a male-female population facing a novel environment where outcrossing is limiting. Invasions of hermaphrodites in male-female populations, and subsequent experimental evolution in the novel environment, led to successful transitions to selfing and adaptation. Adaptation was not due to the loss of males during transitions, as shown by evolution experiments in exclusively hermaphroditic populations and in male-hermaphrodite populations. Instead, adaptation was due to the displacement of females by hermaphrodites. Genotyping of single-nucleotide polymorphisms further indicated that the observed evolution of selfing rates was not due to selection of standing genetic diversity. Finally, numerical modelling and evolution experiments in male-female populations demonstrate that the improvement of male fitness components may diminish the opportunity for reproductive assurance.ConclusionsOur findings support the hypothesis that reproductive assurance can drive the transition from outcrossing to selfing, and further suggest that the success of transitions to selfing hinges on adaptation of obligate outcrossing populations to the environment where outcrossing was once a limiting factor.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Theologidis et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.